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January 2017

Betsy DeVos: Trump’s Voucher
Vulture

By Class Struggle Education
Workers/UFT

Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos have declared
war on public education. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

JANUARY 14 – Who is Betsy DeVos?
Trump's pick for Education Secretary is an extremely
wealthy former head of the Republican party in Michigan
who is a zealot of vouchers and privately run, publicly
financed charter schools. Her goal is to abolish public
education outright.

She is married to Dick DeVos, heir to the family fortune
derived from the totalitarian Amway Corporation. Amway
(for the American Way) is a giant Ponzi scheme which uses
its sales force as a private political-religious army and
funds far-right groups, making the Koch brothers look like
bleeding-heart liberals.

Betsy is from another wealthy Michigan family, the
Princes, whose money came from their auto parts
corporation. Her brother, Erik Prince, is the founder of
Blackwater, the mercenary killer-elite “contractors”
notorious for gunning down Iraqi civilians with reckless
abandon. Along with extreme right-wing ideology, Betsy and
Erik both seek to finance privatization schemes with
public money.

DeVos bases her philosophy on Milton Friedman, the
apostle of “free market” capitalism, who declared:
“Vouchers are not an end in themselves; they are a means
to make a transition from a government to a market
system.” Friedman was an advisor to Chilean dictator
Augusto Pinochet and first implemented his education
policies under that bloody regime.

Hearings start next week on Trump’s Ed Sec nominee.
Confirmation is guaranteed. With Republicans in control of
the Senate, the House of Representatives and the White
House, the Betsy DeVos agenda will soon determine national
educational policy.

Betsy DeVos was central to the near-destruction of
public education in Detroit. The schools were taken over
by the state and starved of money so that their physical
condition was marked by broken windows, rats everywhere.
They treated the schools like landlords trying to drive
out tenants. Then they were massively taken over by
for-profit charters, and have sunk into chaos.

DeVos also played a key role in pushing through a
union-busting “right-to-work” law.

Donald Trump’s voucher vulture DeVos represents a mortal
threat to teachers unions and to public education overall.
The leadership of the American Federation of Teachers and
the National Education Association know this. But like a
deer staring at the headlights of an onrushing car, they
are paralyzed.

The politics of the AFT and NEA tops, like almost all
union leaders in the U.S., are summed up in the phrase class
collaboration. They chain the unions to the parties
of capital, particularly the Democrats. But like the
tango, it takes two to class-collaborate, and the Trump
Republicans aren’t interested in that dance.

What it will take to defeat DeVos, Trump and the rest of
the privatizers and union-busters is hard class
struggle. Last month United Federation of Teachers
president Mulgrew predicted that in 2017 “it’s going to be
war.” He got that right. In recent editorials Mulgrew
warned that NYC schools stand to lose half a billion
dollars in Title I federal funds which the Republicans
have their eye on to finance vouchers.

But it's not just the Republicans. “Democrats for
Education Reform,” is a powerful lobby bankrolled by Wall
Street financiers. Hillary Clinton has been closely tied
to the corporate education “reformers” since she was on
the board of the anti-union Walmart corporation in
Arkansas. And Barack Obama’s administration has used
billions in federal money to push charters, standardized
testing and punitive teacher “evaluations.”

All in all, Betsy DeVos is a fitting successor to the
Democratic charterizers, from Obama's basketball pal Arnie
Duncan to John King. And don't forget Obama's former chief
of staff Rahm Emanuel, who got to be mayor of Chicago by
bashing the teachers union and has kept it up ever since.
The difference is that while the Clinton/Obama Democrats
want to undermine public education from within with
corporatizing “reforms,” the Trump Republicans want to
tear it down altogether.

Efforts to outright privatize the public schools have
repeatedly failed, from the Edison Schools (which went
bankrupt) to DeVos’s campaign from Michigan to
Pennsylvania and Indiana using their millions to promote
vouchers by hook or crook. But we have to defeat all
the schemes to milk public schools for private profit,
which threaten our children’s education and working people
everywhere.

Corporatizing and privatizing “education reform” is
backed by both parties of capital. To defeat the
bipartisan capitalist assault on public education
we need to take the schools out of the hands of Republican
and Democratic politicians. Class Struggle Education
Workers fights for teacher-student-parent-worker control
of the schools. To accomplish this we need to oust the
labor bureaucrats, who have sold out hard-won union gains,
and break with the Democrats to build a class-struggle
workers party.

NYC
Schools Must Be A Sanctuary
For Immigrant and All Students

The day after last November’s
elections, a wave of fear swept through the schools over
the threat to undocumented immigrants. “Will I be
deported?” students asked teachers. School
administrations and teachers unions issued statements of
support. But much more is needed. We need to prepare now
to defend our students and actively resist the threat of
deportations with action. The following resolution was
raised at the December UFT Delegates Assembly. While the
Unity Caucus voted it down, we urge teachers everywhere
to take the initiative to form school-based committees
to defend immigrant and all students.

-------------------

Whereas, in his election
campaign, Donald Trump vowed to deport all 11 million
undocumented immigrants, after the Obama administration
already deported more than 5.5 million immigrants in its
first seven years, and

Whereas, in the wake of the
election there has been an unprecedented upsurge in
racist attacks of all sorts, including at universities
and in schools, as well as taunting of immigrant
students in New York City schools, and

Whereas, Muslims, African
Americans, Latinos and immigrants from Mexico, Central
America and the Near East have been singled for attacks,
which also threaten Jewish, gay and lesbian individuals
and communities, and

Whereas, immigrant communities
have been swept by fear of deportation and all manner of
victimization, and

Whereas, putative
president-elect Trump has threatened to cut off funds to
“sanctuary cities” that refuse to cooperate with
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) police, while
majorities in both houses of Congress have threatened to
cut off funding to “sanctuary campuses,” and

Whereas, under the Constitution
of the State of New York (Article XI), all children must
be provided free public schools and the Supreme Court
has ruled that education cannot be denied to students on
the basis of immigration status, and

Whereas, 40% of the population
of the City of New York are immigrants, and

Whereas, under local laws and
executive orders (Nos. 34 and 41) New York City
employees, including police, have long been instructed
not to provide information on individuals’ status to ICE
and other immigration authorities except in limited
circumstances, and

Whereas, Chancellor’s Regulation
A-101 states that students are not required to present
documentation of immigration status, and that reference
to such status shall not appear on any school records,
and

Whereas, Mayor de Blasio has
stated that the City of New York will not participate in
deportation proceedings and would not hand over
information on immigration status from the municipal ID
cards to federal authorities, but

Whereas, a judicial injunction
has been issued to prevent NYC from destroying
information on immigration status from municipal data
bases, therefore be it

Resolved, that working people,
immigrants and all oppressed sectors can only rely on
our own strength; and be it further

Resolved, that our union issue
a statement that we will stand by our immigrant
students, faculty and staff, as well as their
families, who are at risk of reprisal due to their
status; and be it further

Resolved, that the UFT call
on the NYC Department of Education to publicly restate
that it does not collect information on students’
immigration status, and that it will refuse to
hand over to federal authorities and will immediately
delete any such information that may exist in
school records; and be it further

Resolved, that ICE police
and immigration authorities will not be allowed on
school premises under any circumstances, and be it
further

Resolved, that the United
Federation of Teachers will seek to mobilize mass
labor-immigrant action to defend those threatened and
to stop deportations and call on other unions and
all opponents of racism and defenders of democratic,
minority and immigrants rights to do likewise; and be it
further

Resolved, that a representative
union-wide committee be set up to monitor all
threats and indications of action by immigration
authorities against members of our community; and
be it further

Resolved, that the union take
the initiative to set up committees in every school
including faculty, staff and parents, to establish
phone trees, social media networks and other measures
for rapid response and outreach; and be it further
resolved

Resolved, that if
immigration authorities detain any NYC school students
or their families for deportation proceedings,
such school-based committees should immediately call
an ongoing assembly, including teachers, students,
staff and parents, to shut down the affected school,
and other schools in solidarity, and that the UFT
shall mobilize mass action citywide in support of such
protest action. ■